Texas songs and tourism

Tourism plan signals our Texas pride

Copyright 2013: Houston Chronicle

April 5, 2013Updated: April 7, 2013 11:15pm

The effects of state tourism campaigns often feel limited to airline magazines. But Texas Tourism, our state's official tourism marketing entity, is running a campaign that should make the most jaded native or recent New York transplant proud to be a Texan.

The campaign is a State Songs video series hosted by The A.V. Club, an online snark-filled media website that matches a Texas singer, song and location for four music videos, bringing together a sense of place that captures the size and scale of our incredibly diverse state.

There's the prolific dilettante singer-songwriter David Garza performing his humblebrag of a song "Texas Is My Hometown" while walking through Bishop's Palace in Galveston.

The contrast of his acoustic guitar and winking lyrics ("We have Billy Gibbons / a-how-how-how") against the 19th-century Victorian mansion museum encapsulates the unpretentious charm of those many Texan features that don't always share headline space with energy economics, camera-hungry politicians or Austin.

Translator

To read this article in one of Houston's most-spoken languages, click on the button below.

Balmorhea, an instrumental band named after a tiny West Texas town, takes a more somber turn with its cover of Robert Earl Keen's "So I Can Take My Rest."

Jonathan Meiburg, of the indie rock band Shearwater, brings his performance of Roy Orbison's 1964 hit "It's Over" to the Hueco Tanks State Historic Site - a pictograph-filled desert that the Meiburg apparently enjoys as part of his avid bird-watching hobby.

Who knew?

The ever popular Iron & Wine singer Sam Beam sits on the stage at Gruene Hall to croon "Waves of Galveston," a combination of song and place that strikes at a heart of the Texas musical mythos.

Beneath our economic powerhouse is more than oil and gas: a beating heart that resonates in song.